Because it's been working out so well, right boys? (And I do mean "boys" since the new government didn't think it was important to include women in the new team.) Not so surprisingly, the Tories missed the self-regulation failures related to Big Oil or Big Finance. It's amusing to listen to the right in the US or UK to go on about self-regulation and how government interference doesn't work, especially when faced with plenty of examples of how and why self-regulation does not work. The right can hope all they want that "business will do the right thing" but they won't.
In this case, how in the world does a government health minister think that potato chip manufacturers will curtail their sales efforts in the best interest of consumers? The UK is not far behind the US in terms of overweight and obesity rates so the last thing they need is for senior government ministers to believe that businesses see "healthy" as part of their business plan. They don't and they won't. Junk food producers make and sell junk food. It's their core business so why would they want to deliver anything healthy that might not sell as well? Wishful thinking is not a plan. The old "free from the burden of regulation" is about the most naive comment anyone could make these days.
In a move condemned by campaigners as the government "rolling over on their backs in front of the food lobby", Lansley told a conference of public health experts that he wanted a new partnership with food and drink firms. In exchange for a "non-regulatory approach", the private sector would put up cash to fund the Change4Life campaign to improve diets and boost levels of physical activity among young people.
The time had come, said Lansley, to accept that "lecturing or nannying" people to change their behaviour did not work. He said business people "understand the social responsibility of people having a better lifestyle and they don't regard that as remotely inconsistent with their long-term commercial interest".
Lansley added: "No government campaign or programme can force people to make healthy choices. We want to free business from the burden of regulation, but we don't want, in doing that, to sacrifice public health outcomes."
